“At stake in the spat over the rules is the multibillion-dollar market for tech products — including office equipment, computers, software and new energy products — procured by Chinese government agencies. The value of contracts that would be covered by the new rules isn’t clear, but according to the Ministry of Finance, purchases through public procurement, including nontech goods, totaled about $88 billion in 2008.” – Rachel Hamilton

Here’s the article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126079913899790519.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_world

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BA2DO20091214

If citation in legal writing conforms strictly to some predefined rules (either Bluebook or ALWD), then there’s no reason why the problem can’t be solved by a FSA which describes the finite number of rules set forth in those citation manuals. The solution seems pretty straight forward, and can be implemented fairly elegantly in either python or perl, off the top of my head. On the other hand, a functional language like list or scheme can probable implement achieve the same with significantly fewer lines of code.

More to come later…

A New York Times’ story I read today reminded me of Professor Russel O’Neal’s Ethics In Engineering class as an undergraduate student at UCLA.  Although that class was dreaded most by many of us engineering students for having too much reading and writing, topics touched throughout the quarter made it one of my favorite classes at UCLA, and probably THE one that has made the most impression on me.  In professor O’Neal’s classes, we learned about engineering practices that could have serious consequences on the society, and how the lack or oversight on ethics did lead to engineering disasters.

Other bits of news, stories, and anecdotes about questionable medical practices and unethical doctors performing unecessary medical procedures had me wondering if med students take their social responsibilities seriously.

As I am about to start law school in the fall (barring major surprises in admission), I hope the legal education I am about to receive will at least provide us with some exposure to questions  about ethics like in professor O’Neal’s class.  Like Google’s supposed mantra, I wish to do no evil.  I hope not a paycheck in the world would make me change that.